I just recieved the following email regarding geocaching in St. Paul Parks:

Quote:

DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION OPERATIONS

March 2010

Dear Geocache Owner,

The City of Saint Paul Department of Parks and Recreation recognizes that geocaching provides residents and visitors with a great opportunity to explore Saint Paul’s vibrant and diverse park system. Our mission, “to help make Saint Paul the most livable city in America [by] facilitating the creation of active lifestyles, vibrant places, and a vital environment,” is best fulfilled with the support of active community members like yourself. We thank you for the work that you have done to support geocaching within Saint Paul parks by placing and maintaining geocaches
here.

In order to better track and promote the hiding and seeking of geocaches, the Department of Parks and Recreation has recently instituted a new policy for geocaches placed on City of Saint Paul parkland. The guidelines within this policy will probably already be familiar to you, as they are based off of best practices established by Groundspeak, Ramsey County Parks and Recreation, and the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources. However, in addition to these standard practices, Saint Paul Parks and Recreation has also identified a few sensitive natural areas and other locations where geocaches will not be allowed.

As the owner of one or more geocaches on Saint Paul parkland, we are requesting that you review the attached geocaching policy and register any caches that you own at http://www.stpaul.gov/forms.aspx?fid=98 . If any of your caches are located within off-limits areas, you will be notified and asked to remove or relocate them.

The container must be marked with the following information: the text “Geocache”, and the
name of the cache as it appears on the associated website.

I wonder if that has to be on the outside, or if it can be on the inside? Putting all that text on the outside will mess up the camo of some hides.

I don't even know a good way to mark the outside. Many attempts I have seen rub off or fade.

I plan on heading out this weekend to do a maintenance run on all of my caches and decide which I want to take the time to upgrade and which I will just pull.

I am also curious about a few that I have that may not concern the City Parks Dept. Namely any caches along the median of Summit Ave which I'm not sure is technically a park. I also have my cache at St. Thomas that is not on park property. Others, like the ones down by the river, will need to be registered.

The other thing that caught me didn't concern me, but may concern KB. The registration page only has room for 5 caches and it will certainly be a pain for the parks to catch up on registration for several hundred caches. There is also the stipulation about not allowing subscriber only caches.

Did anyone know they were even working on a policy?_________________If you're successful in what you do over a period of time, you'll start approaching records, but that's not what you're playing for. You're playing to challenge and be challenged.--Lou Brock

The other thing that caught me didn't concern me, but may concern KB. The registration page only has room for 5 caches and it will certainly be a pain for the parks to catch up on registration for several hundred caches.

If you need to register more than five caches, email the coordinates of the additional caches to environment@stpaul.gov.

Bunganator wrote:

There is also the stipulation about not allowing subscriber only caches.

This is becoming more of an issue with public property. There is a thought that you shouldn't be forced to pay to use the public space. There's pros and cons to this logic, but that's the answer I was given with the parks I worked with. That was why I noted that not all parks are adding this, instead, they are just monitoring it to be sure it doesn't become a problem._________________Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

I just clicked on this link and it dosen't work, I wonder if it is part of the streets department._________________Remember One does not need the MNGCA to geocache, but the MNGCA does need members to survive.